


Affection as Affliction

by pseudofaux



Category: Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY
Genre: Other, Pining, spoilers (very very lightly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 14:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17081831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudofaux/pseuds/pseudofaux
Summary: Kaede doesn't need a cure for this.





	Affection as Affliction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohsaizo (heymireu)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heymireu/gifts).



> A birthday gift for sweet Sam, arranged by sweet Naisu! Happy birthday, honey! Soft hand-holding energy forever!

The Mitsuba are a ninja clan of herbalists. I am a good ninja because I have devoted my life to being one, sacrificing the time it would take to become particularly adept with cures or poisons. Simply by being around the others, I have some appreciation for what plants do. But I am no herbalist myself.

I am no more experienced in love than I am with the precise work of medicine-making. But I know love in the same way I know herbs, and love, it seems, _grows_. Seed to scraggle to tree, always yearning for the air and sun.

I love and yearn for her, and have since we were children. To be a child in a clan is not a carefree experience, but our burdens were lighter as children, certainly. And commensurate with the increase of my burdens, my love for her has grown and grown. Sometimes I feel it sheltering us both like a tree-- from the outside world, from our situation, even from being Mitsuba. When we are close it is like we are huddling together by the base of a willow ( _willow: grind the bark to fine powder for pain relie_ f). We can see out, but no one will ever recognize what we have when they look from the outside in, and we can share secrets under the canopy.

That _she_ might not ever recognize is like a blight, like sudden crippling frost to my hopes. But that’s the fear of a weak moment in a game that takes many years to play. If we survive, eventually I will be clan head. I can make things plain to her then, no matter if I have to continue this life as I live it now.

In growing, I have learned that different people have different preferences— no one thinks she is unpleasant to look at, but no one quite seems to understand how lovely she is, either. And this makes me think she is simply my kind, my particular type of person. My particular type of woman.

She’s adorable. Her cute, sweet mouth, and the cute, achingly sweet things that come out of it. The way it becomes a line when she is stubborn. The way it trembles when she is crying in frustration. The flawless, supple curve of her grin. And those cheeks! All of her.

She takes everything, even the bad things, and makes them good.

There are many urges a decent clan leader must deny. There are many urges an adult must deny, because it’s simply impolite to grasp at something without permission.

If I had the permission and the freedom, I would. As gently as a child cups their hands to catch a petal ( _plum blossoms: steep as a tea for chronic stomach ailments_ ), all focus and purpose and appreciation. I would treasure her— not more, but more openly. It would be my delight to trace her cheek with the shared knowledge of the depth of my love for her. I dream of my fingers held between hers, and between her legs. I dream of giving her the peaceful, meaningful life her soul is longing for.

I would never tell her that all her work to secure our people also smooths a path for us. Because that urge is the kind that needs to be denied, for her sake and for mine.

When we send her away, I hate it and I hate the sense it makes. I have to keep going with my own work, down my own path, but I send Fu as often as I can to check on her and bring back news. And whenever it is possible, I go myself, desperate to lay eyes on her and be certain she’s alright, that her strength and bravery and fire and resilience have all kept her safe.

**-*-**

One visit, I find that her face has suddenly become devastating, more beautiful and more grown up than I remember. She has removed herself from the business of the market so distinctly she almost looks haughty. But when she sees me and smiles, it is the immediate, connected smile of friends, and even with this new aloofness to her expression her smiles make her face look soft. So soft I _must_ touch her cheeks, the little peach swells calling for my thumbs with a pull that would be no less strong than her own voice calling my name. Either of my names.

The thought is a wisp of a happy future I want to grasp but I can’t because she is right here, and her cheeks look so magnificently soft and familiar...

“Kaede!” She says, eyes wide but not having moved away from the touch. There is a curl of warmth under my thumbs like syrup in water, diffusing into some new, magnificent power.

I stop myself from kissing her.

I smile instead, the expression so real and full of fondness for her I think she will _know_ … but she says nothing to indicate as much.

Instead, she says, voice a touch lower than I remember, “I have a lot to tell you.”

“I want to hear it all,” I murmur. And I do.

As she eats desserts at a teahouse (slowly and appreciatively and cute, so very cute, all that haughtiness having melted away) she shares the information she’s gathered. She is doing well, clearly having dedicated herself to the effort. But she’s as green as willow buds, and it shows, and I worry the earnestness I love will somehow endanger her.

“Be careful,” I beg, my hand on her wrist, thinking she’ll notice the contact and that she’ll _know_. Her eyes slide from my face to our hands, and then back.  But she smiles as though I am the green one, and says nothing to betray new knowledge. She tells me she is being careful always, and I realize that I will worry about her until my life ends and it is not a matter of trust in her abilities. It is not something she could ever undo— it is something no tincture or powder could ever cure. I simply love her, and I always will.

I want to kiss her and tell her as much, but I don’t.

Later, I smile and laugh and keep things light. I even say goodbye to her at the end of the day, though the wrongness of doing so clangs within my skin like blades connecting.

I think of her kunai, and want her to have something more imposing. Would that suit her, though? She is the most beautiful kind of dangerous, the softness of hydrangea blossoms luring fools to drink pretty, poisoned tea. She doesn’t want to be a poison master, but she would be an exceptional one. And if she had to kill, I’d want her to be able to do it in a way that was peaceful.

I’m certain she would tell me if she’d killed anyone. And I am just as certain that she would need support after. I don’t wish anyone ill, but I feel, deep down, one of those inappropriate urges that must be denied— that someone should die by her hand, so she would cling to me a little and want her hair stroked like when we were children. Because I would give her that, and anything else she wanted, if I only could.

Never, ever, would I actually want her to have to kill anyone. But the roots of my love for her are tangled around my heart, a net that my good sense must slip through to avoid ruin for our people.

For now.

One day I will be clan head, and no matter how “safe” the Mitsuba have managed to become, I will tell her, and see what her face does when I know she has that knowledge.

As she slips into the shadows after we part, I realize that perhaps by then she will be so formidable a kunoichi it won’t show on her face at all.

**-*-**

When I am trying to make myself lovely, her face is what I think of. Practically, I know we have different features to emphasize, but she is forever my standard of what is beautiful. My brush, besotted as I am with her coloring, hovers over my lip, dearly wishing we could emulate her somehow.

I think of her in the colors and patterns of the women of the city, and have to palm myself. Just for a while. But she’s so beautiful and I know she’d be delighted, and her happiness makes sparks in my blood.

The next day, I buy a kimono for her, something charming that will play up the color of her eyes and the hair ornament I already have for her. I tell myself she may need them for reconnaissance. I go to a temple to pray she will only wear them in safety and happiness.

**-*-**

The first time I kiss her it is a gentle, warm thing. It is a firm press of my lips to hers, and hers open in shock. I don’t press further; it is already enough to breathe her this close, to _know_ what it feels like (truthfully, like nothing in the world, but vaguely like petals and a little bit like fine mochi) to kiss her.

“Kaede,” she says softly, and her fingers flutter down to rest on my shoulders. I pull back just a little bit, denying the urge to nuzzle her and follow the softness and scent I know is on her neck.

“Yes. And Sougo,” I tell her again. Because it’s out in the open now.

She licks her lips, and there is a heavy moment where her face shows me that she is thinking but nothing of _what_ she is thinking. Just as I hoped and feared, she’s grown while we were apart.

I can’t help but fixate on the temporary gloss her tongue has left behind on the pink of her mouth. So I see her sigh coming.  
  
“You’re so _beautiful_ ,” she tells me finally, and I feel myself coloring for the first time in ages. She touches my cheek, just like I have touched hers before, but her thumb is more dainty and the brush of it makes me groan in the back of my mouth.

She blinks. Smiles slowing. Knowingly.

She drags her tongue across her lips again as she brings her face to mine, and I chase it into her mouth.Our second kiss is more passionate, equally beautiful.

After it, we deny ourselves no longer.


End file.
